/tmp/aptag.jpg “I Can’t Breathe”: Professional Witnessing and Documentary Truth – Hidden History of Hollywood

“Only the colored people themselves can determine their political, social and economic future.”

William Monroe Trotter

Prof. EA Kiss

This course surveys a hidden canon of African American film while also uncovers the roots of representational injustice in Hollywood and the secret, but cardinal role Woodrow Wilson played in the production and distribution of Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” that led to the rebirth of the KKK. Wilson’s policy of segregation was adapted by Hollywood as a self-censoring industry regulation of representation. Black people could only appear on screen as subservient and marginal characters, never as equals, partners or leaders. This industry code, Wilson’s legacy, has become second nature to Hollywood.

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“I Can’t Breathe”: Professional Witnessing and Documentary Truth

Zora Neal Hurston, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Gordon Parks, Ava DuVernay, Mario Van Peebles museum vitrine

Selma

Ava DuVernay

(2014)

The Tree of Learning

Gordon Parks

(1969)

Panther

Mario Van Peebles

(1995)

Ethnographic Film Essays

Zora Neal Hurston

Hallelujah

King Vidor

(1929)

On Lynchings

Ida B. Wells-Barnett